Education Spending?

Translated it means that SFB is against the local government raising her local taxes for educational purposes but she is just fine with the general government raising other people's taxes so that they can provide funds for teachers at her local schools.

What remains unexplained is why a citizen of Colorado should be paying taxes to provide funds for a citizen of New York to attend a New York State school.

PrintSmith wrote: Translated it means that SFB is against the local government raising her local taxes for educational purposes but she is just fine with the general government raising other people's taxes so that they can provide funds for teachers at her local schools.

What remains unexplained is why a citizen of Colorado should be paying taxes to provide funds for a citizen of New York to attend a New York State school.

The money flows through more hands from the federal level. The more hands the more bureaucracy and the more bureaucracy the bigger the government. Just what the liberals want.

Of course that means less money makes it back to the local level.

Yes, I DO want a Department of Education. And I DO want them to provide grants, and higher-education subsidies, and keep student loan-rates at a lower rate and eliminate the vulture-capitalists at the banks from skimming the students. (NONE of which has ANYTHING to do with K-12 public school funding at the county level...But thanks for playing.)

You say that like it's a bad thing...

And PS can take his "general government" Sovereign-Citizen crap and stick it in the usual place. I thought the buzzword for the month was "collectivist"? I guess sometimes the "oldies are the goodies"....

And that is the point being made. It is not my responsibility to make tuition at a New York State school, or even a private institution located in New York State, more affordable for the citizens of New York State. That is a State responsibility, not a federal one. For every dollar increase the federal government has added to the Pell Grant and Guaranteed Student Loan programs, tuition levels have risen more than double that amount.

The federal participation via Pell Grants and Guaranteed Student Loans, is fueling the skyrocketing cost of college tuition, not making college more affordable. The inflation rate since 1986 is on the order of 115% overall and approaching 500% for the cost of a college education. What that means is that a college education that could be had for say $10K a year in 1986 would cost in the neighborhood of $22K if college tuition had increase by the average inflation rate and actually costs on the order of $60K due to the inflationary influence of the federal government's participation in "making college more affordable".

Can we be honest with ourselves long enough to admit that the purpose of the programs, like the purpose of the GI Bill at the end of WWII, is to delay entrance into the workforce and keep unemployment numbers lower than they would otherwise be? We don't have places like the Gates Rubber Company or Samsonite Luggage where young HS grads can find meaningful work and save for their education any longer so we do the next best thing - we delay their entrance into the employment market for as long as we can at the expense of those that are currently in the workforce. That same workforce is also supporting the previous generation of workers in their retirement via the payroll taxes that they pay for SS and Medicare - another federal "jobs" scheme that encourages people to leave the workforce and make room for younger workers to enter the workforce.

The system is bankrupt at both ends. Funding the expansion of the delaying tactics has become too expensive and funding pensions at expanding levels has also become unsustainable. When are people going to wake up and realize that individual welfare initiatives funded at the federal level harms rather than promotes the general welfare of the union itself? Pell Grants have more than doubled, from around $18 Billion to over $40 Billion, since 2008. Over 60% of that cost increase has nothing to do with greater numbers and is entirely attributable to rule changes that Congress and the president have made starting in 2009. Did you know that you can now get 2 Pells for a single school year to encourage year round attendance? That accounts for 22%. Raising the maximum income level by 50% (from $20K to $30K), adding to list of incomes that may be excluded (EITC, SS, Refundable Child Tax Credit and others), and increasing other income deductions and credits in the formula accounts for an additional 14%. 25% is due to the increase in the maximum award of the grant itself. The Obama administration has been in the driver's seat with regards to the explosion in the cost of the Pell Grant program. They have done so in an attempt to influence the unemployment rate, to keep that number from looking worse than it already does, just as the federal government enacted the GI Bill at the end of WWII so that they could remove those men and women from the unemployment figures nearly 70 years ago.