Do you support Socialism?

[!! Shawn]

Originally Posted by Salty

Your logic is flawed, it's an increased demand of students able to pay for the college system which causes the prices to rise. The increased availability of credit therefor is the cause of this price rise. This means that in the coming few years prices should fall dramatically as who is going to give a student a hundred thousand dollar loan in times where banks wont even lend to each other? At least with a house loan you have equity, these students can just declare themselves bankrupt.

However i'm guessing the prices will not decrease, therefor the problem is supply based. The private institutions in this case are not accommodating enough positions in order to provide cheap tertiary education. They are keeping places at a minimum so that the same profit levels can be achieved by supplying less than required. This is where socialism is particularly helpful.

You do not have vital institutions such as university's which are of great importance for the society, being driven purely by profit. No, right now they are not working at potential output, thus are inefficient and artificially driving up the price of tertiary education for their own sole benefit.

I was wording it in simple terms so that Sin could understand. I could have gone into the fact that tuition will fall in the coming years, I was actually going to go into that but that is just extra information that is not needed.

Obviously other facts such as an increase in population have played an effect, because if the demand was not there the schools would not be able to charge dollar 1, but when there is competition and extra money is introduced into the system, the effect is an inflation in prices beyond what they would otherwise be.

That is the simple fact of the matter, increased availability of funding is a larger factor in the price increases than population changes, or regulation of supply.

Your claim against capitalism is also flawed as you don't mention the effects of competition. You base your theory on a monopolistic system where alternatives are not available.

[!! Shawn]

Originally Posted by Salty

Price levels hardly ever decrease even in times of recession, they generally stay at the same level or increase, but hardly ever decrease. Either way it's simply a lack of supply of degree's, if they wanted to improve the standard they could increase the prerequisites to entry. That would raise the overall standard of the student body, however they instead have decided to increase the cost of it.

At the uni I am at you need to be in the top 20% of the students graduating to even be considered, then depending on the demand the students who get the higher grades are placed first until all places are full. That way the brightest and hardest working students fill the positions, not those who can afford huge fees.

You are wrong about price levels not decreasing. Education is a commodity, and just like every other commodity the prices change. Look at the price of oil.

[Salty]

Originally Posted by !! Shawn

I was wording it in simple terms so that Sin could understand. I could have gone into the fact that tuition will fall in the coming years, I was actually going to go into that but that is just extra information that is not needed.

Obviously other facts such as an increase in population have played an effect, because if the demand was not there the schools would not be able to charge dollar 1, but when there is competition and extra money is introduced into the system, the effect is an inflation in prices beyond what they would otherwise be.

That is the simple fact of the matter, increased availability of funding is a larger factor in the price increases than population changes, or regulation of supply.

Your claim against capitalism is also flawed as you don't mention the effects of competition. You base your theory on a monopolistic system where alternatives are not available.

You are wrong about price levels not decreasing. Education is a commodity, and just like every other commodity the prices change. Look at the price of oil.

Well it's certainly not perfect competition is it, the reputation of schools and the differing degrees they offer means it's not. Does Harvard compare to your local college, I think not.

It's hardly a commodity, education can not be traded on a open market like gold, oil and stocks. It also doesn't have the variety of substitutes, if someone wants to become a doctor they can't just think ohh medical school is too expensive, i'll go to the local college and get my nursing degree, it's not the same thing. Prices of G & S remain sticky, they pretty much never go down. If you have ever done macro at uni you would learn this first year. Universities provide a service, which they are currently under supplying in your country as the market is not pure competition. This leads to capitalism failing and to compare it to value retaining assets is ridiculous.

[BmoreBrawler]

Originally Posted by Salty

Price levels hardly ever decrease even in times of recession, they generally stay at the same level or increase, but hardly ever decrease. Either way it's simply a lack of supply of degree's, if they wanted to improve the standard they could increase the prerequisites to entry. That would raise the overall standard of the student body, however they instead have decided to increase the cost of it.

At the uni I am at you need to be in the top 20% of the students graduating to even be considered, then depending on the demand the students who get the higher grades are placed first until all places are full. That way the brightest and hardest working students fill the positions, not those who can afford huge fees.

This is because of interference in the free market. Deflation was a fact of life before central banks decided to artificially create stable prices.

The reason why prices have gone up is because universities have malinvested resources and created huge bureaucracies and enhanced departments due to the availability of funds from students.

[BMWM3P]

Originally Posted by hinduw

someone must be real bitter and greedy to care so much about money.

I really don't care how much money the gouvernement takes from me as long as I live a happy life, even then i still got enough money to do things i want. I don't have to worry about anything cause i know when something happens to me the gouvernement will help me. In socialism it's mayby impossible to have 8 houses and 20 cars but then again 95 procent of americans won't be able to have that either including you and shawn.

But you make sure you keep a thight grip on your money, i bet it loves you just much as you love him

You don't care because more than likely you live off of the system. Capitalism rewards hard work and ingenuity, socialism rewards laziness and indiference. And we can see a prime example of the attitude socialism breeds by just reading your post.

[Salty]

Originally Posted by BMWM3P

You don't care because more than likely you live off of the system. Capitalism rewards hard work and ingenuity, socialism rewards laziness and indiference. And we can see a prime example of the attitude socialism breeds by just reading your post.

Capitalism breeds greed and huge levels of economic inequality in the country. This has grown to the point in your country where the system has imploded on itself. I know which one I would rather prefer. When your friends and family start to lose their jobs are you going to support them?

[rambov]

Just like Palin, her audience does not understand what socialism is. That's why they all get "pitch forky" when the word is mentioned.

[Jim Jeffries]

Originally Posted by Salty

Capitalism breeds greed and huge levels of economic inequality in the country. This has grown to the point in your country where the system has imploded on itself. I know which one I would rather prefer. When your friends and family start to lose their jobs are you going to support them?

Huge levels of economic inequality exist in every country in the world; except in this one, it is much more possible to increase your wealth and stature than anywhere else. We're the strongest country in the world because we have the greatest mixture of cultures and we use a wide variety of different economic systems. Like you have posted, our police force, public education system, etc are socialistic in nature, yet work fairly well. But our Government also owns Amtrak, which loses a billion and a half dollars per year. Your argument reads "well if a beer a day is good for you, a case a day must be great," which simply isn't true.

Capitalism hasn't failed in this country. We are in a downturn, which happens in a cyclical economy, and which was caused in great part by the huge numbers of bank failures over the last year. Almost all of these were due to banks being forced into making bad loans by organizations like ACORN. We had inflation, mostly caused by oil skyrocketing to 146 dollars a barrel, due to our huge consumption (20 million barrels per day) and complete unwillingness to drill for more (or convert coal to oil, or mine oil shale, build new nuclear power plants, etc and artificially driven up by futures speculation.)

The top 1% in this country pay as much income tax as the bottom 90%, yet people like yourself cry that they should pay more. Our government has turned into a 2+ trillion dollar a year eating slug, with an increasing population that feed off those that produce and keep begging for more.

You have this elitist attitude because you have some secondary education, taught by dirtbags like William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi, no doubt. I know many like you, most have never gotten dirt under their fingernails and have no idea what real work is.

[!! Shawn]

Originally Posted by Salty

Well it's certainly not perfect competition is it, the reputation of schools and the differing degrees they offer means it's not. Does Harvard compare to your local college, I think not.

It's hardly a commodity, education can not be traded on a open market like gold, oil and stocks. It also doesn't have the variety of substitutes, if someone wants to become a doctor they can't just think ohh medical school is too expensive, i'll go to the local college and get my nursing degree, it's not the same thing. Prices of G & S remain sticky, they pretty much never go down. If you have ever done macro at uni you would learn this first year. Universities provide a service, which they are currently under supplying in your country as the market is not pure competition. This leads to capitalism failing and to compare it to value retaining assets is ridiculous.

There are several flaws in your argument. You are now trying to argue that there is not competition because every school is not Harvard. Okay, fair enough, every car is not a Ferrari either, does that mean that Ferrari doesn't have to compete against other manufacturers in the market?

There are alternatives, you can't selectively exclude alternatives because they are not as good. They are alternatives, and at certain prices, they become more attractive.

If there were not alternatives, if Harvard cut its enrollment in half, then those student that would have went to Harvard, but now cannot would receive no college education. That is not what happens. They go to other schools.

My cousin got rejected by Stanford, but USC was happy to take him, and give him a scholarship. Competition does exist, when one school cuts its enrollment, another school is always more than willing to expand to accommodate the need. That is what capitalism is all about.

[!! Shawn]

Originally Posted by BmoreBrawler

This is because of interference in the free market. Deflation was a fact of life before central banks decided to artificially create stable prices.

The reason why prices have gone up is because universities have malinvested resources and created huge bureaucracies and enhanced departments due to the availability of funds from students.

Spot on. Many of the ailments of a free market come from interference with a free market, the sub prime lending crisis included.