For bolded, how is increased total enrollment to colleges bad for the students themselves? It's not a fixed budget place (like some public schools for example) where increased enrollment means more students per teacher.

Here's a study for seattle minimum wage.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...port-suggests/

In other words, MW hike doesn't seem to be killing the growth. In fact Obamacare and regulations (WA state is pretty high on regulations) which seattle overwhelmingly approved didn't seem to hurt the growth at all.

Why no response to my hypothetical? People are divided into support trump / reluctantly voted trump / neutral(other) / reluctantly voted hillary / pro hillary.

What do you think the break down is of people in the first and last group to answer "race is a significant determinant of intelligence"? Do you not think the question design is fairly representing the question of which supporters are more racist?

This is something we could reasonably get an answer to and bet on.

The idea that Trump (or "goaTRUMP", as mickey the not-a-very-big-Trump-supporter calls him) might spend a weekend *gasp* working was so novel, so original, that Fox News saw fit to tweet us a "News Alert" about it:



It's also not really that true, given that Trump spent time both Saturday and Sunday at Trump National Golf Club.

This article conveniently lays out many times Trump said he wouldn't be doing the exact same thing he's actually spending his presidency doing. Seems like just about everyone on Team Trump (including Trump himself) has a vastly different view on the importance of the game of golf right now compared to when Obama was president!

I've never heard of someone who espouses specific hate views against heterosexual people. Is there a heterophobia I'm unaware of?

It's entirely possible there's a smattering of people out there, across various minority groups, who are racist against whites. However, I imagine they're slim in number when compared to people who espouse negative views towards the group I mentioned.

All one needs to do is go to a hate site like Stormfront or Breitbart and read the comments. There's not a liberal or a Hillary supporter in the bunch.

If colleges know more people can afford higher prices to attend of course prices will go up faster. If the government stopped all loans/help for college do you not think college costs will go down dramatically (I'm not arguing for them to do this I'm just curious your thoughts)?

Just because one study allegedly shows raising MW in one city didn't hurt a city doesn't mean it wouldn't elsewhere - specifically not in big cities where the cost of living is often lower.

Your econ 101 works for Trump University. Real colleges are non-profits or public and essentially none of them make ends meet from tuition alone with or without government loans.

Nah, but there are some sweet-ass pejoratives out there, like 'breeder' and so forth.

So let's collaborate to design questions to actually test these things, and people can put their money where their mouth is. The methodology will never be perfect... obviously all people will fudge he answers to be more politically correct, and you can't get a perfect cross section of the population but without any specific reason to believe it will bias the proportions there's no reason why someone who felt strongly about the population more broadly wouldn't be willing to bet on the outcome of polls conducted by professionals with the sampling criteria laid out before hand.

We can answer the question - what percent of racists voted for trump? What proportion were supporters of trump vs clinton? As long as we can come to some kind of an agreement on what questions/answers most succinctly define racism.

Well think about most commodities and how they're influenced by increased purchasing power of consumers. It generally doesn't mean that the price will go up after accounting for inflation, because doing so in a competitive environment just means that someone else will undercut.

People having greater buying power just usually means more units will be sold. And if you expect that the people who're getting a boost in purchasing power are the people who're most price conscious and only on the fringe of being able to afford it to begin with there's definitely no good reason to think that schools will be given greater latitude to improve their margins. If anything, when you significantly increase the total number of units sold you create a greater incentive for new competitors to enter the market which can have a downward pressure on profit margins and effectively price.

So if the government stopped all forms of college assistance you don't believe college costs would drop or stop growing as fast as they have been?

Also, do you agree with Obama that giving away $8k for first time home buyers to buy there first home kept the real estate market up? If not, how is bribing people to buy a house different then bribing people to go to college?

EDIT- abbaddabba, I'd like to hear your response to these questions as well.

No I don't think costs will go down dramatically. I think private universities might shrink over a period of 5 years, cut research, other staff. Public universities will likely start running a deficit, and become completely dependent on the state budgets. But no, they won't drop prices. The degrees themselves will continue to be valuable, and a smaller number of students will continue to be willing to go deeper into debt to get them.

Making public universities free via a federal program will have a far greater effect on the price of education. Private universities will have to drop their tuition costs to attract more people who now have a free choice. They'll have to come up with differentiators of what makes their degrees better.

Google California minimum wage study. Or any other state that implemented it.

so, how much do we wanna bet the wave of Bonanno Crime Family arrests yesterday in Queens are Trump-related?

The walls are closing in, Cheeto.

For the first part, no. I don't think tuition prices at non-profit and public colleges are set like that. There's already more demand than supply at expensive colleges and the market doesn't automatically add supply because colleges all lose money and depend on fundraising, endowments, and public support. Eliminating support for students will just make it so poorer people can't go.

On the second front, public support for home buyers clearly raises prices. It is seen as a public good (like college). In some cases federal support for home buying has unintended negative consequences that are worse than the benefits I think. It's complicated and specific programs would have to be looked at independently.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/ga...-approval.aspx

Trump down to 35% approval via Gallup. So sick of all the winning.

I disagree with almost all of your first paragraph, but there is of course no way to prove one way or the other.

How do you plan on making public universities free? Ask mexico to pay for the textbooks, building maintenance, teacher salaries, etc while they have their checkbook out paying for Trump's wall? OR have someone donate a 3D printer and 3D print some more 3D printers and then start printing buildings, textbooks and robot teachers?

Why do you support making college free before we make all food free? I think a lot more people would agree food is a necessity that everyone needs where a college education is debatable. Also, why make college education free before we make all homes free?

So when colleges set tuition prices they ignore supply and demand? Interesting concept.

We aren't talking about expensive college exclusive. I'm not sure why you bring them up like this.

There will still be other non-government tuition assistance. It's not like no poor kids would go, but yes the number of poor kids that go to college would be less.

At least we can agree on that.

I agree. I think there is a lot that government does that has negative unintended consequences that are often times ignored.

Tons of colleges are very expensive. It's not just Ivy League Schools that are $40k+ per year. And pretty much the only colleges which aren't expensive are public colleges.

So, with no government, yeah there'd be private scholarships and the few Universities with immense endowments would get a reasonable share, but essentially it'd be like it was before WWII where college was for the wealthy.

I don't think sweetening the deal for college loans have a significant impact on price or cost.

There're a lot of reasons why costs are crazy... i'd say the biggest factor is lack of transparency in what actually is adding value (making it really tough to make informed choices).

Offering subsidies or low/no interest rates on student loans is a problem in as much as you think education is overpriced. But it doesn't inflate the price, it just repeats the error. If education is significantly more valuable than the ticket price (and people chronically underestimate it's value) then incentivizing people is a positive (even if financing the subsidies raises a different set of issues).

If your objections to subsidies have to do with unreasonable costs (as opposed to just generally being opposed to any form of tax/subsidy) then you'd probably just want to have stricter requirements for which schools the subsidies can be applied to.

...


Giving cash incentives for home ownership is different in that there's no reason we should want to incentivize home ownership. It's a transfer of wealth without any efficiency gains and a lot of potential pitfalls.

Along the same lines, Huehue just posted this article about Scott Pruitt - after lobbying and associated donations from large chemical manufacturers - telling his subordinates to get with the program and forget about banning a pesticide that gives kids insanely higher rates of autism and other mental deficiencies:

Trump supporters: this is the third-world **** you voted for.

people still value polls?

No I would expand federal college aid to pay for in-state public university tuition for everyone who qualifies (grades/income/age/citizen/permanent resident/etc.). It would cost way less than $100B per year. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...n_tuition.html

But most of that money would be going directly to public university budgets, so they would be expanding, hiring more, paying taxes on it. It's a win-win-win.

For the same reason we make public school free for everyone under 18, but not food and homes. It's an easier political battle.

They've proven to be accurate in the past.

Yes, of course. Why wouldn't they?

Trump likes them if they support him. Its like when we could not trust employment numbers before but now we can!

It appears that Noam Chomsky, who has always steered clear of any questioning of the essential 9/11 "facts", has finally seen, in Trump's White House, an administration disreputable enough arouse his paranoia:

That's a pretty extreme warning. I wouldn't even go there. But I do think that the incompetence factor in the Trump administration makes a false flag act more manageable for an opportunistic, independent group.

In the quote Chomsky is anticipating what will happen if working class whites figure out the Trump steaks are rancid. I actually wanted them to tear down the ACA just to advance the process. I will match Chomsky's suspicion by suggesting the repubs, deep down, feared that tearing down ACA is one way universal could happen through a massive, unifying backlash. So they scuttled their own scuttling of ACA and will seek to weaken it to nothing instead.

It's actually sort of reminiscent of how Obama avoided universal care when the democrats had all the power. It's also a good example illustrating the farce that is our two party system. Theatrics, theatrics, theatrics, then they both maintain a system which sent the stock of healthcare companies through the roof.

Also, education is an investment and not a handout.