Our coddled, entitled children

[LoremIpsum]

<p>

It’s tough, but not the end of the world. Yet. That’s why people should look forward and not back.

</p>

<p>Well, now that makes for some interesting financial speculation: If college costs continue to rise far in excess of current inflation and college debt continues to rise at its current pace, then one or both of the following could happen:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>New college degrees will become scarcer and scarcer due to their unaffordability; having one should thus command a larger premium in the job market;</p></li>
<li><p>Those who earned their degrees earlier paid less and will, in general, have less student debt; this makes it possible to accept jobs at lower pay than competing applicants.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>If the Fed screws up and ignites hyperinflation, then a college degree will be the deal of a lifetime. But if we fall into another Great Depression, the cost of college could plunge as colleges jettison administrators and sports stadiums in order to survive and effectively compete for an ever smaller number of applicants.</p>

<p>I’m surprised the Chicago Board of Trade hasn’t yet created college-degree futures where anxious parents can hedge their bets!</p>

[kluge]

<p>I got mine, but for the rest of you? “It’s tough, but it’s not the end of the world.” Isn’t that exactly the sentiment you’d expect to hear from someone with a sense of entitlement?</p>

<p>

And you can still get a decent education through community college and state schools (no UC) without going into lifelong debt.

California community college tuition is now $46 per unit, or about 180 hours of minimum wage work per year. Cal State Universities? $6000/year tuition, or 750 hours of minimum wage work. In 1976 UC tuition was $300, or about 120 hours of minimum wage work per year. </p>

<p>There were and are various other “fees” on a per-campus basis which are harder to track, and the cost of living at college, well, generally rises along with “the cost of living.” But the straight-up tuition charge, the price of admission, is significantly higher in real terms for today’s generation than anything the boomers ever saw in public universities. And those are simply the facts.</p>

<p>California’s public universities and colleges are not simply “one data point.” One out of 8 Americans live in California. And I have no reason to believe that economic facts of life are significantly different elsewhere in the nation.</p>

[DrGoogle]

<p>UC tuition over the years and the people that were running CA during the years.
[CAL</a> Fee and Tuition History - University of California](<a href=“http://forbestadvice.com/Education/Articles/2011_0721_University_of_California_CAL_Tuition_Fee_History.html]CAL”>http://forbestadvice.com/Education/Articles/2011_0721_University_of_California_CAL_Tuition_Fee_History.html)</p>

<p>[List</a> of Governors of California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_California]List”>List of governors of California - Wikipedia)</p>

[bovertine]

<p>One final point. If you believe the cost of living is so difficult to track you shouldn’t have mentioned it with specific numericsl hour totals in your earlier post. That’s where I got the idea.</p>

[busdriver11]

<p>The conditions I grew up in were pretty much poverty class, but I really didn’t care much, and really wasn’t jealous of anyone. I don’t think I will get medicare or social security when the time comes, though I will have paid towards it for 45 years, most of them at the max rate.</p>

<p>And of course I am always disgusted when anyone tries to blame the evil one percent for anything, because it is quite ridiculous. I suspect that many parents in this forum are in that category, and they certainly don’t feel they have any special political input (I personally don’t even have pull with my dogs, unless I have a piece of meat in my hands). And that most people in that category are doctors, lawyers, business owners, and dual income professional couples, not mega billionaires, who very often pay plenty of taxes. My overall tax rate is 30% of my entire income, though I suspect not even that would be enough to please some. The fallacy that most people in that group are getting millions of dollars a year in capital gains that are lightly taxed is ridiculous. So of course, I think that going after people because they make a high income is absolutely silly, and to think that if they could just pay more, the countries problems would be solved, is a pipe dream. It would be realistic to try to change the cap gains rate, to make it the same as income, and ditch all the tax breaks. But then again, it wouldn’t be class warfare, there would be nobody to blame, and that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?</p>

[romanigypsyeyes]

<p><a href=“I%20personally%20don’t%20even%20have%20pull%20with%20my%20dogs,%20unless%20I%20have%20a%20piece%20of%20meat%20in%20my%20hands”>quote</a>

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You always manage to crack me up, even in the most serious threads :)</p>

<p>Fwiw, I want to know what this class is that doesn’t get taxed. I hear about them all the time. My tax rate is about 25% between fed, state, and city. I know it has a lot to do with being without dependents and such but still…</p>

[busdriver11]

<p>^^Well, being a doglover, you know what I mean. Though I suspect the dogs you’ve had have been far brighter and well trained than mine. They are adorable, but…squirrel! Fly! What was I doing?</p>

[bovertine]

<p>OK. I thought I admitted earlier that I misunderstood what romani’s point of view was until she(he?) clarified it. If I didn’t I am admitting it now.</p>

[soccerguy315]

<p>

Good grief whine whine whine. What exactly are you doing? Plenty of young people get involved and become influential. For cryting out loud, you can get elected to the House of Represdentatives in your twenties. One of the curent VP csndidates was under thirty when he firsr got elected. If you’re so concerned get off your rear end and work for a candidate or a position.

</p>

<p>What am I doing? I am sitting in an office in DC, advising some of the highest level decision makers in the U.S. government. My employer can send me anywhere in the world (including places that require weapons training and body armor) and I have no say in whether or not I go (unless I quit). That’s what I am doing. My money is where my mouth is, trying to help my country do what is best.</p>

<p>What are you doing? Or do you just complain on CC?</p>

<p>btw, my plight is not miserable and I don’t have an iPhone (or any smart phone)</p>

[bovertine]

<p>Well, I’m supporting a family like I have for the past 30 years. I don’t have a glamorous high powered job like you and I certainly don’t have the same access to the levers of power as you do. I’m not complaining but maybe I should be complaining about why a man such as yourself, with such obvious influence, isn’t doing more about the country’s problems.</p>

[romanigypsyeyes]

<p>I am a she. </p>

<p>bus… she’s smart. Until there’s a duck. She has a thing about ducks. She chased one clear across a lake one time and she HATES swimming. My big old pit bull is AFRAID of everything else. Cats, squirrels, large flies, stuffed animals. </p>

<p>Speaking of coddled- I think we can all agree that our animals are more coddled than our children (at least in my family… that dog gets more vacations than I do >.< lol).</p>

<p>Where did soccer say he had a high powered job?</p>

[bovertine]

<p>Well, I’ll agree with that. I’ve got a Guinea Pig I think may be dying. He’s pretty old. In fact I think I’ll give up on this thread and take a look at his cage. That’s a mess I think I can clean up.</p>

[Consolation]

<p>

I am sitting in an office in DC, advising some of the highest level decision makers in the U.S. government.

</p>

<p>Sounds high-powered to me.</p>

[texaspg]

<p>Despite reaching 13k in tuition, the state schools are still receiving a good amount of state taxes to keep it at that level. Essentially, if the tax payers in the state want to subsidize the universities, they are free to do so. It has nothing to do with federal taxes, top one percent, older people increasing federal debt, funding for the wars or any other contributor.</p>

<p>Some states still have low tuitions because they find the money. California is not one of them and Texas is also going that route. Texas could not control the tuition rates once the state stopped subsidizing them. Both these states have exorbitant out of state tuitions in order to subsidize the instate tuitions and at the same time reserve a chunk of seats for OOS. So if Berkeley did not give up so many OOS seats, they would be charging 20k instead of 13k.</p>

[busdriver11]

<p>Funny, a dog scared of a fly! But excited by ducks? My dogs would drown if they tried to jump in the lake!</p>

<p>Well, soccer deserves a high powered job. Especially one where he doesn’t have to wear body armour.</p>

<p>Good luck with the guinea pig, bovertine. It’s hard to think of your pets dying, I don’t know how I can even bear that one when it happens. Hopefully that’s not a mess you have to clean up for a long time.</p>

[romanigypsyeyes]

<p>Consol… missed that somehow. My apologies. Wow. Ok that’s my signal that it’s definitely time to go to bed.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@cobrat

According to them, college back in the '50s and early '60s were still commonly seen as for the scions of the wealthy(mostly private colleges like the Ivies/Little Ivies/etc) or the top 10-15% of an average high school’s graduating class.

</p>

<p>No surprise here – back then only about 10% of the late 20s age population in the US attained a bachelor’s degree.</p>

<p>However, that time was also the beginning of the rise in bachelor’s degree attainment to about 30%, where it leveled off and is about where bachelor’s degree attainment in the US is today.</p>

[MisterK]

<p>

@kluge

Oh, and Misterk? That “Second Ice Age” was actually just one article in one magazine - Newsweek. I seriously doubt that you fretted about it in high school - I know I didn’t and I was in college in the 70’s and about as prone to fretting as I ever have been. No one would even remember it if it didn’t fit the global warming denial propagandist’s purposes so well. Honestly - are you saying you actually remember that article? Now, MAD and Silent Spring - those were first quality fear generators. But no one worried about climate change back then.

It was certainly more “just one article in Newsweek”. Although it didn’t grow to the proportion of “global warming,” it was a public issue for many years. It didn’t cause me to fret, LOL. Anyway, too bad you don’t remember it. I was one of those kids who read newspapers daily (but not Newsweek).</p>

[kluge]

<p>

@bovertine

You are truly obnoxious. Now you perdonslly insiult me with a statement I did not make.

@bovertine (earlier)

nice of you to admit you were coddled and entitled.

Of course, I didn’t actually say that, did I? But you did say “It’s tough, but not the end of the world” to youngsters facing a much steeper hill to climb than most people of our generation ever faced. I admit - I’ve reaped the benefit of being a baby boomer. You have too. But I don’t take credit for doing it all on my own. Yeah, I worked through college, saved and spent prudently, paid for my own kid’s educations, and did a variety of other volunteer “do-gooder” type stuff. But I was able to do that because conditions for my being able to do that were much, much easier for me than for young people in my kids’ generation.</p>

<p>It’s true - I do fault my generation for, as a whole, taking all credit for our accomplishments without acknowledging the help we got from those who came before us, and for failing to admit and deal with the fact that we’ve fallen short in doing the same for those who come behind us. That is the sense of “entitlement” that I’m talking about.</p>

<p>Busdriver, you have some quirky ideas about who the “1%” are and what kind of taxes they pay, from which I infer that your family income is over $400,000 per year, to put you into that category. Congratulations! But you’re not really who people are talking about. The term “1%” is shorthand for the top 1% of owners of wealth in America - not all of whom fall into the top 1% of taxpayers.</p>

<p>You’re right - there are a fair number of two-earner and professional families which earn over $400,000 per year. And most of them pay pretty steep taxes, like you do, especially with 15% FICA off the top, for example. But the average total income tax paid by taxpayers in the top 1% is less than 22%. Think about that for a while. To average out all the high earned-income families like yours, how do you suppose the average gets down that far? (Here is the source data: ww.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html )</p>

<p>I’ll let you do the math. But if you expect me to think you’re a victim or a villain, I’m going to disappoint you. If you have income at that level from working at your profession instead of investments - that is, if you stopped working you would no longer be in the top 1% of taxpayers - you’re not really part of the 1%.</p>

[busdriver11]

<p>Actually, I did not state any specifics about my income, just my tax rate. And from what I believe, when somebody is referring to the top 1%, they are generally talking about the measure of income, not wealth. I suspect a large number of those in the top 1% of wealth are retired, and that is why their tax rate is lower, since they are not taxed on work. And of course, they have had many more years to save. Though from the NY Times article I’m taking the info from, half of the top 1% of earners are in the top 1% of wealth category. Makes sense.</p>

<p>And I don’t think you should think me a victim or villain no matter what I make, whether I am in any specific category of income or wealth. Nobody is a victim or villain based upon how much they make or what their net worth is.</p>

<p>I totally think that the tax code should be simplified and all income taxed at the same rate. But the fact that people utilize the tax code that is in place does not make them villains nor immoral. It just means that our politicians are easily bought and persuaded.</p>