chris_gerrib: (Default)
There is a proposal floating around the US to forgive all student loans for college. Although attractive, this proposal is wrong-headed. And it's unfortunate for those that have taken on debt for college.

The real problem is not people being in debt to go to college. The real problem is the high cost of college, which is caused by two interrelated factors. First, states used to fund state universities by money appropriated from tax income. Now they mostly fund those universities via tuition. Second, student loans are easy to get and well-funding by the Federal government.

Thus, colleges have no incentive to keep the cost of education low. If they don't get it from the state, the students will pay. The taxpayers who don't have students in school have no incentive to insist on state money going to state universities. Private universities can use the sticker price of their programs as a prestige factor and a way to control admission. The only loser in this is the now-indebted student.

Forgiving student loans is a one-time benefit which will, at best, do nothing to fix the cost of higher education and at worst encourage price inflation. If we'll forgive debt once, maybe we'll do it again.

Metaphors

Jan. 11th, 2019 02:54 pm
chris_gerrib: (Default)
I've noticed in several Facebook posts that whenever I say anything disparaging about the current budget crisis, I am immediately accused of being in favor of illegal immigration.

I'm not. I'm in favor of effective solutions. Currently, most places where walls would be effective at stopping or slowing illegal immigration already have some kind of wall or fence. For the record, if there's some place that a wall would help and we don't have one, let's put one in. But running walls through the middle of the Arizona desert won't do any good. Walls merely slow people down. Without aggressive monitoring, alarms and law enforcement response, a wall is a waste of money.

But the debate doesn't seem to be about that. In one Facebook discussion, when I said going after people who hire illegal immigrants would be more effective, the other person said, "so because there are other means that work too, we just shouldn’t even try?" In another Facebook discussion, I didn't bring up the wall - I merely pointed out that Trump was at one time for taxing the rich.

It seems to be that for Trump and his supporters, the wall has become some sort of emotional talisman. In their minds, the wall in and of itself is the most important thing. It could be equipped with ladders every twenty feet and we could fire the entire Border Patrol, but a wall must be built. It's not a rational argument, it's an emotional one.
chris_gerrib: (Me 2)
Every so often, people who are irritated at the dysfunction of Washington DC and/or their local statehouse propose term limits on elected officials. This is, in my view, a clear, simple and wrong solution.

The fact of the matter is that running government is a skill, just like repairing cars or computers. It takes time to figure out how to do it. Term limits mean that, as soon as Joe or Jane Legislator figures out how to do something, they're gone. So instead of having the needed experience, they have to rely on lobbyists and professional staffers to get stuff done.

There is a real solution to dysfunction, namely, vote out dysfunctional officials and vote in functional ones. That requires voters accepting compromise, deal-making and cooperation. There is no silver bullet.
chris_gerrib: (Me 2)
I went to bed at around 11:30 my time last night, when it became clear Clinton had lost Pennsylvania and nobody would call it until all the precincts were in. I wake up to see she lost, and a man I consider an incompetent boob is President-elect. I'm not happy, but if the country survived James Buchanan it will survive Donald Trump. (A low bar to clear, for sure.)

Kudos to the website FiveThirtyEight for being least wrong. The race was close, closer than we knew. Also, Scott Adams was right - Trump is a "master persuader." How else would a self-proclaimed billionaire who thinks Brooklyn is a small town and has a record of screwing common people win the Presidency as the savior of small town white people?

This, like Brexit, was a dying of the light vote. Small town whites came out in droves to protest what was happening to their way of life. (It was what Romney thought would happen in 2012.) I feel their pain every time I talk to my parents about the meth lab in their small Illinois town. But much like Prohibition, here the voters have picked a clear, simple and wrong answer to their woes.

The problems with small-town America and Great Britain are serious, and many are structural. Trump has no more idea how to fix them than to build a starship. His go-to toolbox, "small government," will make matters worse.
chris_gerrib: (Me 2)
H. L. Mencken said that For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. As we hit the final day of our biannual exercise of democracy, I thought I'd reflect on a situation when America picked the wrong answer: Prohibition.

America in the 19th century and into the 20th had a real problem with alcoholism. There were many more alcoholics back then, and more plain-old drunks as well. This was a problem for a lot of people, but especially women. Given the difficulties of divorce, the lack of a social safety net and the limited job opportunities for women, being married to an alcoholic could be disastrous. It was no bed of roses for a man, either, but women and children were disproportionately affected.

Then in the early years of the 20th century, we got cars. One of the advantages of a horse-drawn carriage is that it's actually quite difficult to make a horse run headlong into a tree, no matter how drunk the driver. In fact, I suspect many a drunk climbed into a carriage, said "home," passed out and came to at their house, the horse having gotten there by itself. Cars obviously don't do that. To make matters worse, the vehicles of the era were completely devoid of safety features, so even low-speed accidents could be fatal.

The clear and simple answer to these problems was to ban alcohol. No booze, no drunks, right?

The real solutions proved hard and non-intuitive, from easier divorce to welfare to jobs for women. They included treatment for alcoholism as a disease, dram shop laws, drunk-driving enforcement and safer cars. Finally, they included a reduced social acceptance of being drunk. Goodbye three-martini lunches, hello iced tea. Most all of this was enabled by government action.

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