David Shemano wrote: > Don't get me started on student debt. As the government decided everyone > show own a home, we had a devastating house bubble and financial crisis. The > government has decided everyone should go to college and the government > should finance through loans, which has caused college costs to skyrocket, > which is great for the colleges, but devastating to the students, who are > incurring incredible debt, so we are in the midst of a college bubble and > will eventually have a student loan crisis that will be added to the national > debt. <
It wasn't some alien "government" that made the decision that everyone should own a home. It was a decision by the government elite at the time that the so-called "Greatest Generation" was coming back from World War 2 and many in power were afraid that we'd see not only a return of the Great Depression but also events like the veteran's march on Washington after World War I. BTW, it was quite a popular program, if I remember correctly (from reading, not personal experience). This program -- along with the GI Bill, the Interstate Highway System, and a bunch of military spending and wars -- helped create a couple of decades of the most abundant prosperity that U.S. capitalism had ever seen, significantly more prosperity than it is likely to see in the next two decades, especially after the Big Melt-Down of the economy after the finance crooks got their way for 30 years or so (starting back in 1979) allowing them to accumulate power after power. Anyway, the government's propping up of the economy kept aggregate demand high, which allowed the biggest spate of "wealth creation" that the US has seen before or since. Not only did the capitalists do well (with profits peaking in the 1960s) but a large swathe of the working class (mostly white males) gained, too. After the 1970s, the US government commitment to encouraging home-ownership was subordinate to the massive subsidies received by the financial sector, allowing them to cheat and steal (wealth redistribution) at will, to engage in predatory lending, etc., at the same time that the bankstas knew that the Moneyed Libertarian hero, Alan Greenspan, and their beachhead at the U.S. Treasury would bail them out. After all, the Savings and Loans had benefited from the dole at the end of the 1980s while the stock market had been propped up in 1987 and aided in the 1990s. So they could expect the Greenspan Gravy-train to continue, even with a Princeton Prof in charge. To a lesser extent, the construction sector raked it in, too. Originally, the effort to encourage "everyone" to go to college was part of the GI Bill. With decisions such as that of creating the University of California and similar public universities, this was a major success in terms of wealth creation, since having an educated work force really helps on that fron. Accumulate that human capital! It is the Moses and the Prophets! In the 1980s and after, the efforts to have everyone get a college diploma took on a completely different tilt, especially during the last decade. After all, Reagan and his followers didn't like the idea of having an educated workforce; that only was for the elite. Instead, it was a sop to the burgeoning for-profit college sector (encouraged by that other Money Libertarian hero, George #2 Bush) and to financiers (preventing people from getting out from under student loans via bankruptcy). PS: two points: (1) I don't believe that everyone should get a college degree; Obama is very silly on this point, especially since he isn't lambasting the for-profit colleges.Of course, to do so would offend the Washington Post Corporation, owner of Kaplan University. (2) the inflation in the education sector is not due to demand (as David says). It's more a supply-side phenomenon, the difficulty of raising the productivity of service labor in a time when service wages have to keep up with those in other sectors -- along with a tremendous rise in overhead (insurance, medical, and legal costs, especially). To some extent, college-cost inflation is a matter of "you get what you pay for": colleges provide many more services to students than they used to. We had a gym; they have a health club, etc. -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
