All of this is worth watching. Promise.
(Source: thenakedbusinessman)
“There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:
The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.
Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.
Now, people on the right like to argue that the CBO was wrong. But that’s not the argument Ferguson is making — he is deliberately misleading readers, conveying the impression that the CBO had actually rejected Obama’s claim that health reform is deficit-neutral, when in fact the opposite is true.
More than that: by its very nature, health reform that expands coverage requires that lower-income families receive subsidies to make coverage affordable. So of course reform comes with a positive number for subsidies — finding that this number is indeed positive says nothing at all about the impact on the deficit unless you ask whether and how the subsidies are paid for. Ferguson has to know this (unless he’s completely ignorant about the whole subject, which I guess has to be considered as a possibility). But he goes for the cheap shot anyway.
We’re not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?”
35 Facts That Prove Higher Education Has Become A Corporate Scam
The Student Loan Debt Bubble
1. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.
2. According to the College Board, college tuition is absolutely soaring. The following comes from a recent CBS News article….
Average tuition and fees at public colleges rose 8.3 percent this year and, with room and board, now exceed $17,000 a year, according to the College Board.
3. Average yearly tuition at private universities in the United States is now up to $27,293. That figure has increased by 29% in just the past five years.4. In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loan debt.
5. In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.
6. According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark in early 2012.
7. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.
8. Over the past 25 years, the cost of college tuition has increased at an average rate that is approximately 6% higher than the general rate of inflation.
9. Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is $35,568.
10. The cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.
11. One survey found that 23 percent of all college students actually use credit cards to pay for tuition or fees.
12. According to recent Pew Research Center polling, 75% of all Americans believe that college is too expensive for most Americans to afford.
13. College has become so expensive that it is causing many college students to do desperate things in order to pay for it. For example, an increasing number of young college women are actively advertising on the Internet for “sugar daddies” who will help them pay their college bills.
14. The student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005.
15. Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.
The Quality Of College Education In America Stinks
16. The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.
17. According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of all U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.
18. Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.
19. 35% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.
20. 50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.
21. 32% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.
22. U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.
23. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.
Not Enough Jobs For College Graduates
24. Only 55.3% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year. That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.
25. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the “official” unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.
26. One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.
27. In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
28. In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
29. In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
30. In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespeople have a college degree.
31. The percentage of mail carriers with a college degree is now 4 times higher than it was back in 1970.
32. Right now, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.
33. According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.
34. Record numbers of Americans are going to college, but incomes for young American adults just keep falling. Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
35. Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.
So is going to college always a bad idea? Of course not.
But it is a huge gamble.
(via laughinacorner)
Student loan debt has ballooned since the 1990s.
Note: This graphic is the corrected version of an earlier tumblr post, which had misleading proportions.
I know what’ll help the world: make sure gaining education is as difficult and expensive as possible.
(via inothernews)
“[I]n my opinion there is no greater example of Washington politicians and K Street lobbyists working against our future prosperity than in the treatment of student loan debt. To be clear, this problem existed even before the crisis; families have been taking on crushing debt to help the kids…
"We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates."
— David Graeber at the Guardian, in the best piece I’ve read yet on Occupy Wall Street (via judyxberman)
(via loveyourchaos)
"
President Obama doesn’t take mulligans when he plays golf. The same cannot be said for the way he governs. Just weeks after negotiations over the debt limit hobbled the nation and his presidency, Obama appeared in the Rose Garden on Monday to do what he had not done before: He laid out a specific plan for deficit reductions, including more than $1 trillion in new taxes, and promised to veto any plan that cut entitlements without raising taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations.
In place of general statements about “balance” and “compromise,” Obama proposed $310 billion in new cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs, $270 billion in other cuts and reforms, and $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue that Obama said would be borne mainly by the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The President spent much of July publicly minimizing the differences between himself and Republican House Speaker John Boehner as he chased after an elusive “grand bargain” on deficit reduction. But now he described a sharp contrast, and offered two ultimatums: First, the promise to allow all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 if Congress cannot reach a tax reform agreement, and secondly, a promise to veto any bill that takes a dime from Medicare beneficiaries without raising taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.
“Middle class families should not pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” Obama said, laying out a message that will likely carry him through next year’s election. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.”
It was a speech designed to shift the debate over spending and taxation onto Democratic turf, away from the debate on spending toward a debate on what is fair for the middle class. “Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that,” he continued, “anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness, explain why somebody who’s making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15% on their taxes when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that, paying a higher rate. They ought to have to answer for that.”
Obama went so far as to name names, calling out his old negotiating partner, Boehner, for laying down his own iron clad marker, by promising not to raise taxes. “The Speaker says we can’t have it ‘My way or the highway’ and then basically says ‘My way or the highway,’” Obama said. “That’s not smart. It’s not right.”
"—
Time Magazine, “In New Tax Offensive, A Reversal of Obama’s Deficit Debate Strategy.”
Moar, please.
(via inothernews)
"The President offered a date (for his jobs speech). The Republicans said ‘Could you move that date?’ And the President said ‘All right.’ Non-crisis averted! It’s the first installment of what I hope will be many in our new segment, ‘Tales Of Reasonable Accomodation.’"
— JON STEWART, on the media’s (and, admittedly, the blogosphere’s) obsession with “Speechgate,” “Speech Spat” and all the other “Tales of Manufactured Conflict,” on The Daily Show. (via inothernews)
I would urge everyone to take a moment and consider just who you voted for (most likely for a second, third, fourth… time) in the previous election while complaining about the current, absolute cluster-fuck of childishness that has been business-as-usual in Washington D.C. for, oh I don’t know, the last bunch of years.
Everyone who is there was put there by us. Time to hold them and ourselves accountable for our own decisions.
A little perspective on this whole deficit mess
This graph, courtesy of the New York Times, has been making the rounds today, and it’s worth examining. Note that health care reform, much-maligned by the right as deficit-killer, cost less than even the most inexpensive of George W. Bush’s policies (that policy being Medicare Part D). Note also that the Bush tax cuts alone added more to the deficit than all of President Obama’s new policies combined — and that’s including projected spending over the course of a theoretical second term. source
Obama’s policies in hand are worth way less than the top two of the Bush.
(Source: shortformblog)
"
The challenge, really, has to do with the seeming inability, particularly in the House of Representatives, to arrive at any position that compromises any of their ideological preferences, None. I have gone out of my way to make compromises.
…Can they say yes to anything? It’s the Republican Party that has said that the single most important thing facing our country is deficits and debts. If their only answer is what they have presented, which is a package that would effectively require massive cuts — if that’s their only answer, then it’s going to be pretty difficult for us to figure out where to go.
"—
President BARACK OBAMA, on the unwillingness of House Republicans to compromise — even if it means preventing the country from going into default — during a White House presser earlier today. Obama said Speaker John Boehner “walked out” of negotiations, because God forbid they raise taxes on the motherfucking rich.
(Source: inothernews)
President Obama’s embrace of a bipartisan breakthrough on contentious debt talks may have doomed the deal.
Obama went out of his way to hail a $4 trillion proposal unveiled Tuesday by a bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators, calling it “a very significant step” that mirrors the balanced, pain-for-all approach he has pressed in negotiations to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and curb runaway spending.
But a high-ranking Republican aide told Politico.com that Obama’s cheerleading would immediately turn off conservatives in the Republican-controlled House.
“Background guidance: The President killed any chance of its success by 1) Embracing it. 2) Hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan,” a GOP leadership aide e-mailed to Politico’s Playbook.
Obama Thursday had crowed about the prospects of the “Gang of Six” deal crafted by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Mark Warner (Va.), and GOPers Tom Coburn (Okla.), Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Saxby Chmabliss (Ga.).
Republicans do not want what is best for the country, they want what is worst for democrats. If that means the American people suffer - I reiterate - they don’t care.
(Source: inothernews)
Are you all paying attention to Democrats fighting to make cuts and increase taxes to pay back our debts while Republicans are fighting to make cuts and keep Big Business happy? Republicans do not care about the middle class. They care about keeping those who got them elected (see aforementioned Big Business) happy.
(Source: inothernews)
"Polls show that a large majority of Americans blame wasteful or unnecessary federal programs for the nation’s budget problems. But routine increases in defense and domestic spending account for only about 15 percent of the financial deterioration, according to a new analysis of CBO data.
The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years."
The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years."
— Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt - The Washington Post (via robot-heart-politics)
(via loveyourchaos)
